Thermal inkjet imaging devices, such as “inkjet printers,” are generally well known in the art. Typical inkjet printers include a main chassis that supports a media conveying system and a pen traversing system, as well as a control system for controlling various operational functions of the printer. The media conveying system is configured to consecutively move imaging media, such as sheets of paper, past the pen traversing system.
The pen traversing system is configured to support one or more inkjet pens, and to move the pen(s) transversally across the media so that the pen(s) can project ink onto the media in desired locations to form an image. The combination of the movement of the media in a given direction by the media conveying system and the movement of the pen(s) transverse to the given direction by the pen traversing system enables the printer to produce virtually any two-dimensional image on the media.
A typical inkjet pen generally includes a body that defines and/or encloses an ink reservoir. Supported on the inkjet pen body is a print head that, in turn, includes an orifice plate. A plurality of small orifices are defined in the orifice plate. The print head generally includes a series of small heating elements that can be precisely and selectively controlled. Each heating element is typically associated with a given orifice, whereby the heater is activated to nearly instantaneously vaporize a quantity of ink near the given orifice, causing a droplet of ink to be projected from the orifice and onto the media. In this manner, an image can be produced on the media. Such means of projecting ink onto an image carrier is generally known as piezo-electric or thermal print head technology. However, it is understood that other means of printing are known.
Typically, conventional inkjet printers are capable of producing color images in addition to black and white text. It is known that by selectively applying one or more of four basic colors of ink to the media in various manners, a substantially broad spectrum of image colors can be produced. The four colors thus generally employed are those of yellow, cyan, magenta, and black (it is understood for the purposes of this discussion that “black” is considered to be a color).
Subsequent to the initial development of the color inkjet printer it was discovered that by employing reduced concentrations of ink color, the quality of the image produced could be significantly improved, especially when reproducing color photographs and the like. For example, typically the ink colors of light cyan and light magenta are used in place of regular cyan and regular magenta, respectively, for producing higher-quality images.